Hay Festival 2012: Alex Crawford: 'Being a woman war reporter is an advantage'

The Sky News correspondent, who has four children, said at Hay Festival that
being a woman is an advantage when reporting on war, writes Louise Gray.

In the year Marie Colvin was killed in Syria, two female war correspondents gave an insight into not only being a woman in a war zone, but a mother.

Renowned war reporter Janine di Giovanni only succumbed to post traumatic stress when she had a child.

After surviving sniper fire and being under siege in Bosnia, she suddenly found herself afraid to take a pushchair on an escalator.

“I was trying to live in peace, but with that peace there is more chaos than wartime,” she says.

Her memoir Ghosts by Daylight tells the story of what happens after the wars are over, as she and her husband battle alcoholism, trauma and nappies trying to readjust to normal life in peacetime Paris.

Related Articles

Di Giovanni says that motherhood is what makes female war correspondents different. She had to take four years off to have a child and now finds she takes fewer risks. Instead she is more likely to go into war zones after the world’s press has left to find the real story.

“It is the responsibility of our craft to give a voice to people who do not have a voice,” she said.

Alex Crawford, the Sky News correspondent, who has four children, said being a woman is an advantage.

She said people are more likely to speak to a female, especially women in the Arab world.

“People do not see you as a threat in hostile environments, they are more likely to talk to you.”

Crawford described horrific scenes in her most recent assignments in Libya, including seeing a man shot so close there was “ blood and brains” on the camera.

Her book Colonel Gadaffi’s Hat has won critical acclaim.

Despite being a woman, she does not concentrate on the ‘soft side’ of war, insisting that the public should see the terrible things going on.

“You cannot sanitise war. People need to know that children are being killed.”

The mother-of-four admitted it was tough for her family and she can be ‘foul’ when she comes back from assignment stressed and anxious.

“My daughters do worry about me dying or not coming back.”

But as a mother from Libya in the audience said, the bravery of women like Crawford, di Giovanni and Colvin is worth it, to force the world to see the suffering of other mothers that we all have responsibility for.